Google wins Scroogle patent

Google won a patent to search a user’s email to hit them with adverts. Google has been awarded a patent on a “System and method for targeting information based on message content in a reply,” which includes the company’s practice of serving up ads based on the contents of messages sent via the Gmail service.

Microsoft has dubbed this practice as "Scroogled” and used it as part of an advertising campaign as to why you should not use Google. While Google doesn’t address that criticism or use that word in the patent filing, but the company does take its own subtle jabs at Microsoft in the diagrams accompanying the patent.

One implies that the Microsoft Access database file pose a security risk, and another that suggests alternatives to Access next to a product search for the software. Google filed for the patent in September 2010, long before Microsoft’s “Scroogled” campaign began. The patent was officially granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office here.